Chapter 33: Worm Buffet
Bullworth Academy was strange in the sense that despite being a boarding school, its gates remained open most of the time. There were reasons to this, none of them particularly good and most of which were accountable as laziness from the faculty's part, but the two biggest reasons were that:
1. If you tried to lock the gates, the locks or the gates themselves would *inexplicably* break... And fixing them cost money.
2. It was better for the kids to go through the gates than other routes that seemed to pop up as fast the faculty tried to block them. Some rather nasty incidents had happened in the past when kids had found their way to the ocean, the abandoned mining shafts, and Happy Volts Asylum.
So, while going outside the school premises was still technically forbidden, the rules against it were hard to enforce. In fact, prefects mostly brought justice to people going outside whenever they felt like it, to whomever they felt like it. With Jimmy Hopkins' and Peter Kowalski's reign in effect, there seemed to be a preference towards members of whichever clique that happened to be unruly.
Now, however, the gates were locked. While causing financial loss to the Gauthiers and Harringtons and dooming Mandy's teeth and stomach lining had brought Johnny Vincent the courage to face his girlfriend, it had also caused Harringtons to demand that the gates would be kept closed until the journal was to be found and all the prints of it disposed of. With heavy cussing, the greaser king had to turn back with his queen in tow.
"Now what? There's no frickin' privacy around this damn school", Johnny, the guy that had just a few hours earlier spread very private and sensitive information around like nobody's business, huffed.
"How about the basement?" Lola suggested and took a long step to avoid a puddle.
Johnny hesitated, but agreed after some consideration. While the janitor had once or twicw caught the two doing indecent things down there and Ivan Alexander sometimes used the place to take a nap, it was now possibly the best place to avoid getting caught while playing hooky. Not to mention he could just lurk there and stomp rats for a while to calm down if he lost his temper. So, just as the bells rang as a sign that classes were starting, the two greasers sneaked past the prefects and through the door facing the parking lot.
"Now tell me... Why'd you do it?" Johnny asked while pacing around the underground maze, nervously checking for any eavesdroppers. Lola rolled her eyes at his paranoia unenthusiastically and followed him until he settled down.
"Do what, Johnny?" she asked with a low voice, deciding that she wasn't going to jump into conclusions just yet: she'd have him spell out the accusations before admitting to any of them.
"Don't act innocent! I saw that old bat's journal: you ain't preggers. You lied to me", Johnny hissed, his smoldering eyes meeting Lola's.
Lola's mouth twitched but she didn't flinch, not even under the full force of her boyfriend's angry glare. She stared at him silently, not quite sure what to say.
"I want answers! And don't you even think about getting' away this time!" Johnny snapped loudly, taking a step toward her with his hands clenching into fists.
"Fine", Lola sighed, mildly amused at Johnny's attempt to intimidate her. She wasn't going anywhere, but not because she couldn't.
The girl decided that since she was in a dingy storage room, she would at least make herself more comfortable by having a smoke. So, even while confronted by the tense and mightily enraged Johnny, she sat on top of a wooden tall crate and, ever so casually, dug out her cigarettes and a lighter.
"I lied", she admitted matter-of-factly once she had taken her first drag.
"Why, why would you do that to me?" Johnny asked impatiently, desperate to find out what the hell her excuse was.
Thoughtfully, Lola clicked her tongue and bit her lower lip. With the ease of an eeny meeny miney moe, she decided to go with... The truth.
"Dunno."
Johnny's face crinkled as his mind strained to comprehend why she'd say something like that. He remained silent, almost as if to wait for any kind of sign that she was just joking. Lola, however, had no intention to deliver a punchline. So, for a while, the only sounds came from the old plumbing around them and the forgotten radio that played tired old country songs all night and day.
"Dunno? What the hell is that supposta mean?" Johnny finally asked, his voice almost failing in the middle of his question.
"It means I don't know. I guess I just... Felt like it", Lola said and pursed her lips to blow out a cloud of smoke.
Wow, it was actually kind of liberating to finally say that to his face.
Johnny's blood chilled as the empowering adrenaline seemed to vanish from his veins, leaving him with nothing but the cold and humid feeling caused by the rainy day. He had expected a heated argument, a fight where Lola would once again run him for all his money before he could make her admit the bare minimum of the things she was accused of. In a way that made Johnny feel dirty for persecuting her, no less. What he was getting now was something else and he liked it even less.
"You said you loved me. Was that a lie too?" Johnny asked miserably, his voice cracking.
Lola looked at her boyfriend quietly, not sure how to explain, or even what to explain. Technically, she hadn't ever really lied to him about that, even though she would have if it had ever become necessary.
"I don't know, Johnny", she said, almost meekly.
"What do you mean you don't know? You either are in love or you aren't!" the clique leader barked.
"Love is... Complicated", Lola shrugged.
"I don't know what you mean by it anymore", she continued.
Johnny opened his mouth and was about to say something, but all he managed to produce was a pained "...a" in the back of his throat. He went back to the drawing board with that.
Lola shook her head him. Love, huh? When was it, again, that the word had seemed to have taken a completely different meaning? Back when they had been fifteen years of age or so, Johnny had talked about love then too, but the words "I love my girlfriend" could've been easily replaced with "I love having sex regularly" and "I love looking good in front of my peers". That had been pretty easy to understand.
"I think... After I had my fun with Gord, I think you said that you loved me, not who I am. What did you mean by that?" she asked with mild curiosity, tapping the ash from the tip of her cigarette.
"It's just... Special", he articulated awkwardly. Lola, mercilessly unsatisfied with the answer, cocked her brow at him. Johnny cursed at her in his mind – he hated how vulnerable she could make him feel. He was supposed to be the guy of the relationship.
"It's... It's not about what you do. It's special 'cause you're the one doin' it. It's like you're... Family", he explained, feeling like a sappy sod for saying something like that aloud.
Lola seemed to contemplate on that, biting the inside of her cheek thoughtfully.
"I guess I have never loved you, then. Or anybody, for that matter. I mean, I don't care about family. You should know that already", she then said with another casual shrug.
Around that moment, Johnny Vincent's heart was smashed into tiny little pieces. His head didn't register it immediately, though, so he still tried to turn things for the better.
"Everyone needs a family!" he insisted.
Lola hemmed, swiping strands of hair off her forehead.
"That's so you, isn't it... So quick to assume things. Always trying to get to the bottom of things but you never accept what you find", she sighed.
"I really couldn't give a damn about family. Mine or yours."
The crushed boy exhaled brokenly and leaned against a wall, slumping against it all the while staring at Lola incredulously. He was shaken by a realization that Johnny should have come to a lot earlier: Lola hadn't ever been in denial about this issue. There was no trust he could re-establish. There hadn't ever been anything in the first place.
"S-So... Now what?" he asked quietly.
"Well, I don't know about you, but I'm done. Are we done? Here, that is", Lola inquired and made a hand wave gesturing towards her unlikable surroundings. She wanted to get out already. She was impressed how maturely Johnny seemed to be taking all this, she really was, but it was no fun.
Johnny turned his eyes to the cement floor, feeling varying amounts of hopeless and miserable. He was about to end the conversation, but then another question popped into his mind.
"What happened between you 'n' Larry? Why'd you mess with him?" he asked pallidly.
"Hm? You still think about that?" rang Lola's genuinely surprise voice.
"Well, he's part of my family too... Like a brother", the young man admitted bleakly.
"Pfffth. Brother? Yeah, right", Lola snickered, putting out her cigarette by smearing what was left of it against the crate she was sitting on.
"What, what do you mean?"
"He was more like your dog. A gay dog", the girl chuckled.
Lola's insolence sparked Johnny's anger once again. Was she going to dismiss everything he held dear?
"Take that back!" he growled.
"But it's true, Johnny dear! It was our little secret."
"I... But Larry's not...", Johnny stammered, annoyed at what he still perceived as a sick joke.
"Oh my, didn't you even once wonder why he suddenly lost interest in me? He found someone else... What I did was a favor to him, really. Poor thing knew he couldn't get what he wanted but stuck around anyway. It was pathetic."
The young man's eyes widened and his jaw dropped open. He had been suspicious about that at the time. A part of him had awaited for him to stab him in the back and take Lola away from him the moment he got the chance. But, that had never happened...
"Well, if you don't have anything to add, I'm going to go now. See you around, ex-boyfriend", Lola sighed and dropped down from the wooden crate, then started to walk towards the boiler room exit.
After Lola's foot steps faded away, Johnny was left alone in the school's storage room, staring into nothingness as he did his best to cope with all the cans of worms he had just opened.
What on earth had become of his family?
Author's Notes: I didn't want to just chew her up and boot her out of the story...